Engine Gaming’s Stream Hatchet releases 2022 trend report

Engine Gaming and Media’s Stream Hatchet, announced it has published its Video Game Streaming Trends 2022 Yearly Report. This essential read provides an in-depth study on the current state of the global video game live streaming industry over the last year, offering unparalleled insights into the performance of the industry, as well as top performing creators, games, releases and more. Live streaming has become a major outlet for both media companies, IP holders, brands, and individual content creators to create and distribute longform live entertainment programming directly to audiences on platforms such as Amazon’s Twitch, YouTube Gaming, and Facebook Gaming. Importantly, these insights highlight the opportunity to tap into an audience increasingly hard to reach for brands. The report highlights major activity that led to a transformative year for live streaming: Although perceived as a "gaming" medium, live streaming continued to evolve, experiencing meaningful growth in non-gaming content categories such as Sports, ASMR, Crypto, and Just Chatting, generating over 4.2 billion hours watched, an increase of approximately 6% year-over-year and representing close to 20% of all viewership. 2022 was the year of the Content Creator with 6 of the top 10 peak moments throughout live streaming attributed to individual creators, primarily developing their own IP and events. In addition, 5 of the 6 top creator events were non-gaming activations. Female content creators saw a significant increase in representation on the Top 1,000 Streamer List across platforms, particularly with YouTube Gaming and Facebook Gaming, where representation increased by approximately 5% for both platforms. Live streaming across the major platforms reached 29.5B hours watched, up over 6% from peak COVID-19 levels in 2020, yet ~4.5 billion less from peak levels in 2021, predominantly driven by declines on Facebook Gaming. The top 10 most popular games, creator networks, and individual streamers, included new entrants as well as some impactful brand partnerships and activations.